This last year was a blockbuster for Guild Wars 2 throughout the MMO community. Hype has been running high all year long and even non-Guild Wars fans have been clamoring for more information about one of the most anticipated MMOGs of the year. It’s been a very wild year, with a large amount of information being shown along with playable demos of a very early version of the game. What have we learned this year and what might we look forward to in the next?

Mighty Professions

The biggest news this year was the reveal of several of the professions, including demonstration videos, hands-on gameplay, and an in-depth look at what each profession would be bringing to the table. We’ve got a detailed look at the Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, and Elementalist all of which came from the original Guild Wars that we’re still enjoying.

Yet, there is a lot of mystery behind the other professions. We still don’t know what the remaining four professions will be or any suggestions. Some believe that the Mesmer class will make a return, while others suspect we’ll get something new and foreign for a profession.

Happy Holidays

Guild Wars is known for its extensive holidays full of items, quests, and more not to mention epic finales in which you must obey Mad King Thorn or help in an epic battle between Grenth and Dwayna. Guild Wars 2 will be keeping that tradition with large lavish events and minigames that bring something different and new to the party. One event that we’ve heard of is the Bar Brawl in which you’ll be able to use various objects to fight other players in a semi-realistic bar fight setting.

Crazy Crafters

We learned that crafting will appear in Guild Wars 2 and you’ll be able to create weapons and armor to use. Crafted items won’t be junk that’s created as a “meatsink” (to pull money out of the game and help with inflation) so much as it’ll actually be a helpful compliment to your adventures. You won’t need to craft the same sword a hundred times to skill up, instead you’ll craft a sword that you can use for a while and still progress in your tradeskill.

Dynamic Content

World of Warcraft has recently been using their “phasing” technology more and more with each expansion and patch, but Guild Wars 2 is looking at taking a similar idea and using it heavily throughout the game. The entire world will be dynamic where you’ll have a real impact on it with your questing. Help a city defend itself from a group of centaurs and it’ll open up as a quest hub for another area. Allow the city to fall and you’ll need to help the local townspeople retake their city and find yourself going on an entirely different adventure. The world lives and breathes based on the actions of the adventurers that reside within it.

Personal Stories

Sometimes it’s easy to lose just who your character is within a game. You, your guild, your friends, and that random person jumping up and down screaming about bugs in their pants all did the same quests, made the same forced choices, and have all reached the same conclusion (except for the guy with bugs in his pants). Yet, in Guild Wars 2 each player will have their own personal story that they will be able to play through and make their own decisions on who to help, what to do, and where to go. Cutscenes will be tailored for each player, so even if you group up and everyone has a different personal story, you will still experience the game from your story and not theirs.

Combat and Skills

One of the bigger things we learned was that the skill bar was going to be limited to ten skills. You’ll get one elite skill, one self heal skill, three skills of your choice, and then five skills based on the weapon you currently have equipped. This gives way to a lot of tactical choices in which weapon to bring, when to switch weapons, and a whole host of variety in the way combat works for each of the professions. For instance, Warriors will need to switch weapons to perhaps equip a shield to block a fireblast or a two-handed sword to slay a Wizard quickly while Elementalists cannot switch weapons in combat, but can change their “attunement” to decide what skills their weapons have.

Traits

If you complete a profession challenge you’ll unlock a trait which can be “equipped” to provide a boost to your characters attributes, affect a skill, or much more. These are obtained by doing various challenges for your profession. Warriors for instance would want to train physically while Elementalists would want to research knowledge.

Player vs. Player

Guild Wars has always been about PvP and GW2 will not change this trend. There will be two types of PvP in GW2. Structured PvP which is similar to the current Guild vs. Guild combat in the original Guild Wars and World PvP which are locations where you’ll participate in an epic large scale battle against other “Worlds” (the term for a server in GW2) in an epic, but casual, PvP mode.

The Future

In the later part of 2010 ArenaNet, after a large series of reveals and playable demo showings, slowed their hype engine to a crawl while they worked on more content for Guild Wars 2. During this time we’ve not learned a whole lot more, even though we’ve gained a lot of insightful knowledge throughout this year. What does that mean for the future? Well you can bet next year we’ll get a large helping of new information, profession reveals, and maybe even a clearer view of when we can expect to get our hands on the game itself.

That pretty much sums up everything we’ve learned this year. 2010 was a great year for Guild Wars 2 and let’s hope that 2011 will be just as good. In the meantime, come by the Ten Ton Hammer community forums and discuss what you liked the most this year and what you are anticipating the most next year with fellow community members.